Results tagged “ideas” from Roaring Fork Jazz Workshop

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Been awhile since I posted any session notes. In any case, we've been hard at it this spring.

Last night we dove in to a couple of the less used keys, and practiced the Dominant 7th bebop scale starting on the 2nd scale degree. We explored ways of getting to a chord tone, delaying the deed until the descending portion of the exercise, then using the "enclosure" technique (enclosing the 3rd) to "resolve" the scale/chord. Here's an example of an idea that we played with:

We took that idea through all the keys, then through several keys of blues. In our exploration, we relied on our musical ears to confirm the "rightness" of a particular solution. There's certainly mathematics that would back up our appropriate solutions, I believe, but we'll leave that to all those civic music engineers out there.

Thanks to Terry Bannon for helping out with his beautiful bass line/chordal accompaniments.

Finally, the attendees agreed that having participated, they were less "square". Those who weren't there remain square. ;-)

Using the dominant 7 bebop scale, we've been playing short descending phrases, starting on each note of the scale. We're using different methods of getting from a non-chord tone to a chord tone in the next beat. Here is an example of what I mean:

Bebop scale examples

We then took each small phrase, and played with the phrase through the Bb blues. Here's an example (starting on the 4th, and enclosing the 3rd):

Blues bebop example

Welcome back to the Roaring Fork Jazz Workshop for Spring 2010! We're back with a vengeance!

We'll be meeting every other Monday, in one large swinging group. Check out the calendar for workshop dates. Our sessions, this spring, will have a fairly narrow focus, for a change. Here are some goals:

• continuing to learn how to get around fluidly on your instrument with a good tone, and good time
• developing more coherent linear phrasing
• injecting chromaticism into your melodies

We'll be tending to the blues and rhythm changes, using, as the foundation, bebop scales.

Last night, we played over a Bb7 chord/scale using the mixolydian bebop scale. We played through some exercises, confining ourselves (temporarily) to the following rules:

• only diatonic motion (no arpeggios or skips)
• start phrase on beat one (kind of an arbitrary rule, but a rule, for now)
• if starting on a non-chord tone, make it a quarter note (there are other ways of handling starting on non-chord tones, and we'll get to those)
• change direction only on chord tones

We traded fours, using the scale/rules and one of the two common phrase endings, as described in David Baker's "How to Play Bebop" series.